[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 47 (Wednesday, March 24, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E549-E551]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   SEARCHING FOR SANITY ON SANCTIONS

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JOHN CONYERS, JR.

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, March 24, 1999

  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I have been urging a solution to the Iraqi 
crisis which does not depend on the suffering of thousands of 
vulnerable and innocent people. To this end I support the easing of the 
economic sanctions on Iraq while simultaneously tightening the military 
embargo. The cost of our containment policy does not have to be the 
death of 5000 children a month, and in fact the American role in the 
embargo that causes such devastation undermines any containment we hope 
to achieve.
  I would like to enter into the Record an excellent article from The 
Nation magazine which provides a fresh look at our Iraq policy. The 
article by Joy Gordon, ``Sanctions as Siege Warfare,'' presents a 
critique of the recent escalation in the use of sanctions to solve 
diplomatic crises. By detailing the latest statistics regarding 
suffering in Iraq, it contends that the imposition of sanctions 
conflicts with the United Nation's historic mission to alleviate 
worldwide suffering. It presents the case that the ``Iraqi experiment'' 
has in fact failed and that such a comprehensive sanctions regime is 
both unviable and beyond the administrative capabilities of the UN. The 
unwieldy, inefficient and inconsistent bureaucracy of the Oil-for-Food 
program has ensured that the UN can not even fulfill its own 
acknowledged prerogative to deliver urgent humanitarian aid. The 
program was intended as a transition, emergency operation, not a 
sustained effort to feed 23 million people over decades. This program 
is in addition to restrictions placed on ``dual use goods'' (a label 
which includes pencils and other items needed for schools), which the 
nation needs to rebuild its sanitation, health and agricultural 
infrastructures. Even after some limited reform, Oil-for-Food is still 
unable to meet the most basic needs of the people of Iraq. Some in 
Congress disagree with that, but I ask them where is their evidence? 
The World Health Organization, the United Nations Food and Agricultural 
Organization, UNICEF, and the Secretary General of the UN have all 
found otherwise.
  The horror of this situation was brought to my attention most 
eloquently by Denis Halliday, who recently quit his job as the 
Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and the director of 
Humanitarian Affairs in Iraq over this precise issue. The work that 
Halliday has undertaken along with Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for 
Policy Studies, has made an important contribution to bringing the 
indescribable human crisis in Iraq to America's attention. (I single 
out the United States because much of the world already knew how bad 
the situation in Iraq was.)
  Gordon's article describes the centrality of the United States' role 
in perpetuating sanctions, and most significantly, the misguided 
justifications which underpin US policy. The US, in its self-declared 
role as ``world policeman,'' is turning increasingly to sanctions as a 
``non-violent'' alternative to bombing campaigns. We should not allow 
starvation to become an alternative to diplomacy. In the long term, the 
implications for the general populace can be devastating. In Iraq, the 
interior had already been destroyed by nine years of conflict 
(nineteen, if one counts the Iran-Iraq war). The weak and young have 
suffered the most whilst those in power continue to live comfortably.
  The supreme aim in Iraq, to remove Saddam Hussein, is itself unviable 
whilst the dictator remains bolstered by such powerful cadres and the 
people remain divided, mutually hostile and depoliticized. Gordon's 
article alludes to the fact that sanctions can only help achieve 
political objectives when tangible opposition movements and the 
apparatus for dissent already exist. This is why sanctions against 
South Africa were an effective tool for ending Apartheid; the African 
national Congress was an organized, credible, internal, popular 
democratic opposition. When such institutions do not exist, sanctions 
can be counter-productive as they have been in Iraq, perpetuating the 
state of crisis upon which dictatorships depend and fostering a legacy 
of bitterness towards the west.
  It has often been said that you cannot achieve democracy by 
undemocratic means. I

[[Page E550]]

would add as a corollary that you also cannot inspire respect for human 
rights by undermining them. The article below shows how the sanctions 
on Iraq have been as war-like as war itself, and I hope it helps to 
establish new criteria that will make our policy both more humane and 
more effective.

                    [From the Nation, Mar. 22, 1999]

                       Sanctions as Siege Warfare

                            (By Joy Gordon)

       As the case of Iraq has shown, there's more than one way to 
     destroy a nation.
       The continuing American bombing of Iraq has drawn attention 
     away from the international debate over economic sanctions 
     against Baghdad and their toll on the Iraqi people. yet the 
     crisis these policies have engendered in Iraq raises crucial 
     questions about the United Nations' growing reliance on 
     sanctions as a device of international governance. Can this 
     modern-day equivalent of siege warfare be justified in 
     ethical or political terms? It is a question that goes to the 
     very heart of the UN's dual commitment to both peacekeeping 
     and humanitarian principles.
       The role of the UN in the Iraqi sanctions regime has been 
     convoluted and contradictory from the start. Articles 41 and 
     42 of the UN Charter empower the Security Council to use 
     economic tactics to keep international peace (although before 
     sanctions were imposed on Iraq in 1990, the UN had imposed 
     them only twice, against South Africa and Rhodesia). At the 
     same time, the UN has an explicit commitment to the Universal 
     Declaration of Human Rights and to the many other documents 
     that espouse the right of every person to health, food, 
     drinking water, education, shelter and safety. Indeed, the UN 
     has a decades-long history of humanitarian work by its many 
     agencies--the World Health Organization, UNICEF, UNESCO, the 
     Food and Agriculture Organization, HABITAT and others. Thus 
     the UN has found itself in the awkward position of 
     authorizing a sanctions regime that is causing massive human 
     suffering among those least responsible for Iraqi policy, 
     while at the same time trying to meet humanitarian needs and 
     protect those populations most harmed by sanctions--women, 
     children, the poor, the elderly and the sick.
       Although there is controversy over the precise extent of 
     human damage, all sources agree that it is severe. Voices in 
     the Wilderness, an antisanctions activist group based in 
     Chicago, has used the figure of 1 million children dead from 
     the sanctions; the Iraqi government claims 4,000-5,000 deaths 
     per month of children under 5. Even US Secretary of State 
     Madeleine Albright does not contest how great the human 
     damage has been, but has said, ``It's worth the price.'' 
     Richard Garfield, an epidemiologist at Columbia University 
     who analyzes the health consequences of economic embargoes, 
     calculates that 225,000 Iraqi children under 5 have died 
     since 1990 because of these policies--a figure based on the 
     best data available from UN agencies and other international 
     sources. The Red Cross World Disasters Report says 
     underweight births have gone from 4 percent in 1990 to 25 
     percent in 1998. While it is harder to calculate the impact 
     of the economic devastation on adults, it is quite acute, 
     particularly for women. In 1997 the Food and Agriculture 
     Organization estimated that chronic malnutrition in the 
     general Iraqi population was as high as 27 percent, with 16 
     percent of adult women under 26 undernourished and 70 percent 
     of women anemic.
       The Iraqi crisis shows how peculiarly unsuited the UN is to 
     manage a sanctions regime. This is partly because it had 
     imposed sanctions so rarely before and partly because of 
     its longstanding commitment to alleviating poverty rather 
     than causing it. The fact that the sanctions against Iraq 
     are so extensive and so novel has forced the UN to 
     generate from scratch an extraordinarily elaborate set of 
     mechanisms to manage them, through which it attempts to 
     reconcile its conflicting commitments.
       From the beginning, the UN both predicted an impending 
     humanitarian disaster and made moves to alleviate it. The UN 
     began assessing the human damage immediately after the 
     Persian Gulf War, when it made an initial, ill-fated proposal 
     to allow Iraq to sell oil for food. The Security Council 
     formed the ``661 committee,'' consisting of representatives 
     of each nation in the Security Council, to monitor the 
     sanctions against Iraq established in SC Resolution 661. At 
     the same time, the committee was also responsible for 
     granting humanitarian exemptions to the sanctions. The result 
     was that it put in place procedures that in fact functioned 
     as obstacles to any smooth influx of food and medicine. A 
     cumbersome sanctions bureaucracy scrutinized and approved or 
     denied every contract, the proposed quantity of goods, their 
     price and their intended use.
       To sell humanitarian goods to Iraq, a company would submit 
     an application to its national mission at the UN, which would 
     then turn it over to the 661 committee. But the 661 committee 
     did not publish any criteria for approval, and its meetings 
     were closed sessions at which neither Iraq nor the vendors 
     were allowed to have representatives present to answer 
     questions or offer information in support of the contract. 
     The application process typically took months, sometimes as 
     long as two years. And the committee's rulings were 
     inconsistent--the same goods sold by the same company might 
     on one occasion be deemed permissible humanitarian goods and 
     on another be flatly denied without explanation.
       In addition, during this period all fifteen members of the 
     committee had to approve exemptions by consensus; thus any 
     nation could effectively exercise veto power or cause 
     repeated delays of weeks or months simply by asking for more 
     information. As a result, it was expensive and exasperating 
     even to apply to sell food and medicine to Iraq. On small 
     British company that sold medical supplies described the 
     process: First, to talk to an Iraqi buyer, public or private, 
     the seller had to apply for a license to negotiate, which 
     could take three to four weeks. Once buyer and seller came to 
     an agreement, the seller had to apply for a supply license, 
     which could take up to twenty weeks. In the meantime, Iraq's 
     currency would have devalued substantially, so the buyer 
     might not be able to afford quantity of goods or might need 
     more time to raise the additional hard currency. But that 
     would require a change in the terms of the application, and 
     any change in the application meant the whole process began 
     again. Thus the red tape undermined Iraq's ability to import 
     even those urgent humanitarian goods permitted under the 
     sanctions.
       While food and medicine were theoretically permitted during 
     this time, ``dual use'' goods were flatly prohibited. Under 
     the terms of the sanctions, ``dual use'' items are those that 
     have civilian uses but also may be used by the military or 
     more generally to rebuild the Iraqi economy. Dual-use goods 
     include pesticides and fertilizer, spare part for crop-
     dusting helicopters, chlorine for water purification, 
     computers, trucks, telecommunications equipment and equipment 
     to rebuild the electrical grid. Anything that might go toward 
     rebuilding the infrastructure, or toward economic poverty 
     generally, is labeled ``dual use.'' Yet Iraq's infrastructure 
     had been devastated by massive bombing during the Gulf War, 
     which destroyed or caused extensive damage to water treatment 
     plants, dams, generators and power plants, pipes and 
     electrical systems for irrigation and desalinization of 
     agricultural land, textile factories, silos, flour mills, 
     bakeries and countless other buildings and resources. While 
     Iraq was in principle allowed to import food and medical 
     supplies, it was prohibited from buying the ``dual use'' 
     equipment needed to grow and distribute food, to treat and 
     distribute potable water, and to generate and distribute 
     electricity for irrigating crops, refrigerating food and 
     operating hospital equipment. The damage to water 
     treatment plants and water distribution networks caused, 
     among other things, a cholera epidemic and increases in 
     waterborne diseases, infant diarrhea, dehydration and 
     infant mortality.
       Although bureaucratic obstacles effectively prevented much 
     humanitarian material from reaching Iraq, the UN did grant 
     humanitarian exemptions and heeded some criticisms based on 
     humanitarian concerns. At the urging of the UN Secretary 
     General, the 661 committee streamlined many of its 
     procedures. But the basic policies remained intact--
     humanitarian goods required prior approval, and the ban on 
     dual-use goods remained in place. And when the UN's interest 
     in security and humanitarian concerns came into conflict, the 
     interest in security still trumped.
       In 1996 the Security Council and Iraq agreed to an Oil for 
     Food program (OFF), which provides a mechanism for the 
     purchase of goods except where the 661 committee has a 
     specific objection, and then monitors their distribution and 
     use. Under OFF, Iraq was initially authorized to sell $2 
     billion of oil in any six-month period (the limit was later 
     increased to $5.3 billion). The extensive presence of UN 
     humanitarian agencies in Iraq (as well as UNSCOM) is funded 
     by the oil sales themselves. There are more than 400 
     international UN staff in Iraq and another 1,300 Iraqis on 
     the UN staff. In the northern sector of the country the UN 
     has taken over an entire range of governmental functions on 
     behalf of (and with the agreement of) the Iraqi government--
     including food distribution, agriculture, nutrition programs, 
     distribution of medical supplies, dam repair, renovation of 
     schools, installation of water pumps and the provision of 
     printing equipment for school textbooks.
       In the central and southern governorates, the mandate of 
     the UN agencies is only to assist and monitor the government 
     in such functions. Even so, UN staff determine whether 
     resources are adequate to meet ``essential needs'' in a given 
     area, and they document and confirm the equitable 
     distribution of food, distribution and storage of medical 
     supplies, and the use of water and sanitation supplies. Iraq 
     submits proposals for every purchase with oil funds--every 
     gear, pipe, chemical, valve, piece of plywood, steel bar and 
     rubber tube, for a country of 22 million people, on which it 
     proposes to spend the $2.9 billion expected to come from the 
     current phase of Oil for Food. For each of these items, Iraq 
     is required to specify not only the exact use but the 
     particular end user--which grain silo will be using each of 
     the conveyor belts Iraq wishes to purchase. Although the UN 
     bureaucracy now processes these contracts quickly, there are 
     still substantial delays when the seller fails to provide 
     enough details in the application or when its nation's UN 
     mission is slow to submit the paperwork.
       The intricacy of the process for obtaining purchase and 
     contract approval pales in comparison to the thoroughness 
     with which each item is observed and documented once it 
     arrives in Iraq. At the border, inspection

[[Page E551]]

     agents under contract to the UN document the arrival of every 
     item, verify quantity and quality, and conduct lab tests to 
     confirm that the goods conform to the contract. Once the 
     goods have crossed the borders, UN observers then confirm the 
     transit of all goods, their storage and equitable 
     distribution, and they document the end use. Finally, UN 
     staff review the documentation of the hundreds of UN 
     observers. All this is paid for by 2.2 percent of the Iraqi 
     oil sales--as of November 1998, $207 million. Precisely 
     because the system of verification is so thorough, the 
     Security Council has been willing to grant permission for 
     some dual-use goods to enter the country. The 661 committee 
     has allowed purchases, for example, of chlorine gas for water 
     purification and spare parts for crop-dusting helicopters 
     because UN personnel were in Iraq to verify the location and 
     use of each canister of chlorine and the installation of each 
     helicopter part and the destruction of the old parts.
       Relative to other UN programs around the world, those in 
     Iraq are highly elaborate and expensive. Yet they do not come 
     close to meeting the country's needs, according to the 
     Secretary General's report of last fall. Although the 
     quantity of chlorinated water is greater now, the water 
     distribution system has deteriorated so much that by the time 
     it arrives in people's homes, the water is not consistently 
     potable. The emergency parts for electrical generators that 
     do arrive merely slow down the deterioration of the 
     electrical system, the power cuts are expected to be worse 
     next year than this year. There are 210 million square meters 
     of minefields, and the UN's three mine-detector dog teams (a 
     total of six dogs) can barely make a dent.
       It does not seem that the strcture of the UN sanctions on 
     Iraq could be duplicated in other situations. The expense of 
     an elaborate bureaucracy, which closely monitors virtually 
     all the goods Iraq has been permitted to purchase, is 
     possible only because Iraq is paying for it. And that, in 
     turn, is possible only because Iraq's wealth is so vast, and 
     so easily converted to cash. Were it not for Iraq's wealth 
     and the Security Council's success in tapping it, monitoring 
     the sanctions regime and its humanitarian exemptions would 
     cost far more than the UN could ever afford. Since most 
     sanctioned countries--Yugoslavia, for example--don't have 
     resources that can be tapped in the way Iraqi oil has been, 
     it is hard to imagine that there could be many more 
     sanctions-and-exemptions regimes of this scale.
       While the sanctions against Iraq are in many ways 
     anomalous, they nevertheless provide a graphic demonstration 
     of how such extreme sanctions are implemented and justified. 
     Just as the Gulf War offered a testing ground for new 
     alliances and new weapons in the post-cold war world, the 
     sanctions against Iraq have been an experiment in nonmilitary 
     devices of international governance. Both the United States 
     and the UN are exhibiting a growing reliance on economic 
     sanctions to achieve their aims around the world, even if in 
     areas outside Iraq the sanctions regimes are somewhat less 
     ambitious.
       Although the UN had imposed sanctions only twice between 
     1945 and 1990, it has done so eleven times since then. But 
     even this is very little in comparison with the frequency of 
     US sanctions. Between 1945 and 1990 sanctions were imposed 
     worldwide in 104 instances; in two-thirds of these, the 
     United States was either a key player or the sanctions were 
     unilateral actions by the United States with no participation 
     from other countries. Since 1990 the United States' use of 
     sanctions has increased by an order of magnitude. As of 1998, 
     it imposed economic sanctions against more than twenty 
     countries.
       Even as it has been using sanctions on its own behalf, the 
     United States has spearheaded many of the Security Council's 
     recent sanctions efforts. While it would be incorrect to 
     treat the Security Council as simply a naked tool of US 
     hegemony (as much as Jesse Helms would like that to happen), 
     the United States does have disproportionate influence both 
     because of the veto power it holds as one of the five 
     permanent members and because of its economic influence 
     globally. And its leverage has only increased in recent years 
     as Russia's willingness to exercise its veto power has been 
     tempered by its dependence on the West for massive capital 
     investment.
       In 1990, sanctions appeared to be a nearly ideal device for 
     international governance. They seemed to entail inconvenience 
     and some political disruption but not casualties. Unlike the 
     situation in Somalia, sanctions in Iraq did not involve 
     troops. Because sanctions seemed to incur less human damage 
     than bombing campaigns, peace and human rights movements 
     found them attractive as well. Indeed, many of those opposing 
     the Gulf War in 1990 urged the use of sanctions instead.
       But what Iraq shows us is that it is now possible for 
     sanctions to cause far more than inconvenience or 
     international embarrassment. In the absence of a Soviet bloc 
     as an alternative source of trade, it is now possible to 
     construct a comprehensive sanctions regime that can 
     absolutely break the back of any nation with a weak or 
     import-dependent economy. Iraq has also demonstrated, 
     quite graphically, that sanctions can cause fully as much 
     human suffering as even a massive bombing campaign. Iraqi 
     casualties from the Gulf War were in the range of 10,000 
     to 50,000. Casualties attributed to sanctions are anywhere 
     from ten to thirty times that--and that's only counting 
     the deaths of young children.
       This ought to raise serious ethical concerns, since 
     sanctions (like their low-tech predecessor, siege warfare) 
     historically have caused the most extreme and direct 
     suffering to those who are the weakest, the most vulnerable 
     and the least political. At the same time, those who are 
     affected last and least are the military and political 
     leadership, who are generally insulated from anything except 
     inconvenience and the discomfort of seeing ``the fearful 
     spectacle of the civilian dead,'' to use Michael Walzer's 
     phrase. However devastating their effects on the economy and 
     the civilian population may be, sanctions are rarely 
     successful in achieving changes in governmental policy or 
     conduct. Sanctions, like siege warfare, have generally been 
     perceived by civilian populations as the hostile and damaging 
     act of a foreign power. Sanctions, like siege warfare, have 
     generally resulted in a renewed sense of national cohesion, 
     not domestic pressure for political change. The most generous 
     scholarship on this issue holds that in the twentieth 
     century, sanctions achieved their stated political goals only 
     about one-third of the time. But even that figure is disputed 
     by those who point out that in most of these cases there were 
     other factors as well; a more critical estimate places the 
     success rate at less than 5 percent. In the other ``success'' 
     cases--such as South Africa, which is often cited to show 
     that ``sanctions can work''--there were major factors other 
     than sanctions. Many have suggested that the end of apartheid 
     was due to internal political movements as much as to 
     international sanctions. South Africa was also atypical in 
     that those most affected by the sanctions also supported 
     them. If not sanctions, then what? Is bombing preferable to 
     sanctions as a device to ``punish rogues'' and enforce 
     international law? Without the sanctions option, it is 
     sometimes argued, the militarists will just say there is no 
     longer an alternative to bombing. But the Iraq situation 
     demonstrates that sanctions are not merely a ``problematic'' 
     or ``less than ideal'' form of political pressure. Rather, 
     they are an indirect form of warfare. Not only are they 
     politically counterproductive, but sanctions directed toward 
     the economy generally (as opposed to, say, seizing personal 
     assets of leaders) are inherently antihumanitarian.
       Denis Halliday, the former Assistant Secretary General of 
     the UN, resigned in protest last fall, saying that he no 
     longer wished ``to be identified with a United Nations that 
     is . . . maintaining a sanctions programme . . . which kills 
     and maims people through chronic malnutrition . . . and 
     continues this programme knowingly.'' His conclusion seems 
     very like US Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun's position 
     on the death penalty in his 1994 dissent in Callins v. 
     Collins: For the death penalty to be constitutional, it must 
     be applied equally in like cases; but at the same time, the 
     sentencing judge must have the option of granting mercy based 
     upon the circumstances. These two requirements, Blackmum 
     reasoned, are irreconcilable, and no amount of ``tinkering'' 
     will somehow make the contradiction dissolve. Likewise, no 
     amount of tinkering will make sanctions anything other than a 
     violent and inhumane form of international governance. It is 
     hard to articulate any greater good that can justify the 
     deliberate, systematic imposition of measures that are known 
     to increase chronic malnutrition, infant mortality and the 
     many varieties of human damage that impoverishment inflicts.

     

                          ____________________